Monday Dec 12, 2011

As you may have seen in our recent posting on HCM 9.1 Feature Pack 2, user experience continues to be a key focus for PeopleSoft. As many of our customers have demonstrated for some time, however, you can use PeopleSoft’s Applications Portal to unify your PeopleSoft applications, and present a great user experience to your entire user community. A great user experience in PeopleSoft is both art and science – but it's not difficult to achieve using the Applications Portal. With some straightforward web design, site branding, and page configuration, you can create a user experience with PeopleSoft that will rival any contemporary web application, and surpass the user experience of SaaS vendors.

Your employees and managers have become accustomed to using modern sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Google, and they are demanding a similar experience from their ERP applications. You can provide your PeopleSoft self-service applications users an intuitive, vibrant, and dynamic user experience with the portal, and enable your users and communities to accomplish both day-to-day and self-service tasks more efficiently.

The PeopleSoft Applications Portal can also serve as the gateway to your enterprise or the rest of the world. Here are the main benefits that Applications Portal provides, all of which contribute to an enhanced experience for your user communities:

A richer user experience

Seamless and simple integration of PeopleSoft applications content

Content management

Web 2.0 and collaboration – at all levels from small groups to the entire enterprise

The ability to organize useful information by business process, and present it in a user-friendly way. Bring useful supplementary information into the context of transactions, improving efficiency.

Many customers have realized value in these and other areas, employing the PeopleSoft Applications Portal as a framework for aggregating PeopleSoft and external content and as a means to enhance the overall experience of their PeopleSoft applications. The most common example of this is for HR self-service, but Applications Portal is used in different ways by a variety of customers in many commercial industries, public sector organizations, and educational institutions.

For more information on the Applications Portal, read the high-level White Paper on how to create a great user experience, and our Statement of Direction. We will also be producing a more detailed Technical White Paper (Red Paper) on crafting a great UI with Portal. This should be available with Feature Pack 1 of Applications Portal.